Deaccession Debate Leaves Out BIPOC Voices

November 10, 2020

After a spate of controversial deaccessions by the Brooklyn Museum, Everson Museum, and the Baltimore Museum of Art, the art world is publicly debating a once-taboo topic: selling artwork. Critics decry these museums’ recent sales of canonical paintings by white male artists, arguing that the institutions are taking advantage of a loosening of deaccession guidelines brought on by the COVID-19 pandemic. Defenders of the sales point toward the removal of such art as a step toward diversity, equity, accessibility, and inclusion (DEAI) initiatives—in discussion prior to the pandemic and regulatory changes—as the sales make space and provide funds for museums to acquire pieces by artists of color. Absent from the conversation, however, are the voices of those that defenders purport to serve: BIPOC communities, artists, and museum staff.

In April, the Association of Art Museum Directors (AAMD), an organization dedicated to advancing the profession of museum directors, relaxed its guidelines for deaccession, or the removal of artwork from a museum’s permanent collection, typically by sale. The change allows deaccessioning proceeds to be applied to the “direct care” of a museum’s collection. It was met with tension from insiders worried about maintaining industry standards.

“The horses have left the barn on the direct care idea,” said Martin Gammon, founder of Pergamon Art Group and renowned collection management advisor to museums and individual collectors. Despite the AAMD calling its relaxed guidelines a “temporary approach,” in Gammon’s opinion, “allowing for more latitude on these funds is probably going to be a new norm.” 

The Brooklyn Museum was first to test the regulation, announcing that it would be sending twelve works to auction at Christie’s before even posting the AAMD-required definition of its direct care policy to the homepage of its website in late September. The museum’s policy is based on a white paper by the American Alliance of Museums (AAM), a non-profit association charged with helping develop museum industry standards.

Brooklyn’s October 15th sale was met with relative approval from the AAMD, AAM, and most museum insiders, but Gammon cautioned, “there clearly are more things in the pipeline... Who knows if those other categories or objects meet that standard?” 

On October 16th, the Brooklyn Museum announced a second auction, featuring paintings by Monet and Miró, this time with Sotheby’s. Together, these sales have netted over $25 million for the museum.

Although the AAMD insists its resolution is “not intended to incentivize deaccessioning or the sale of art,” such sales, largely of work by white male artists, are increasing.

The Everson Museum and the Baltimore Museum of Art (BMA) are part of that trend, defending their deaccessioning decisions with DEAI rationales. Initially, the AAMD approved of both museums’ decisions.

“The choice is not between financial stability or a commitment to diversity,” says Sascha Freudenheim, a principal at PAVE, which handles public relations for AAMD.  “It is important to proceed with an eye towards DEAI as a part of everyday operations and not as a separate set of goals.”

But not everyone was so accepting. Though the BMA was an originator of deaccession in the pursuit of diversity, the practice is still too “radical” for some. 

Los Angeles Times art critic Christopher Knight offered a blistering criticism of the BMA after it announced its intent to deaccession a Warhol, a Still, and a work by living artist Brice Marden. The BMA, he said, had “ripped open an ethical breach big enough to drive a truck through.”

Baltimore also met fierce criticism from former trustees and saw the resignation of two board members. In response, Clair Zamoiski Segal, chair of the BMA’s current board of trustees, said in a statement: “We, along with many other museums, have been operating within a system that has excluded too many for far too long. This exclusion registers in the art history we represent in our galleries,” she says, “and it registers in those staff members we employ to shepherd and interpret these histories.” 

Ultimately, Baltimore decided to “pause” the sale of the three artworks, which were pulled from auction just two hours before they were on the block at Sotheby’s New York on October 28th.

Conversely, on October 6th, the Everson Museum did complete its sale of Jackson Pollock’s Red Composition. The piece garnered the museum about $12 million. Responding to Everson’s critics, Jessica Arb Danial, president of the museum’s board of trustees, countered with a passionate defense of her institution’s DEAI ideals.

“While fine arts experts and critics may try to shame the Everson,” she said, “these voices are echoing decades of status quo art history textbook and gallery etiquette, rather than the realities we are living today.” 

One such reality amid the deaccession for DEAI controversies: every person quoted above is white. In fact, nearly everyone indirectly quoted is also white—including every critic, historian, board member and museum director named in linked content. The AAMD’s leadership is also all white, as are thirteen out of the fourteen collaborators on the AAM’s direct care white paper.

According to a recent Andrew W. Mellon Foundation survey of over 330 AAM or AAMD-affiliated art museums, 72 percent of art museum employees are white. In roles categorized as “intellectual leadership positions”—conservation, curation, education, and museum leadership— the percentage of white employees increases to 89, 84, 74, and 88 percent, respectively. 

Further, a 2018 study by artnet News and In Other Words concluded that less than three percent of American museum acquisitions since 2008 have been of work by African American artists.

“The conversations are about or talking around us—and are affecting us—but not including us,” says Amy Andreiux, the Executive Director of the Museum of Contemporary African Diasporan Arts (MoCADA) in Brooklyn, a lecturer at Parsons’ New School, and a first generation African American.

While the current deaccession argument focuses on quandaries of industry precedent and DEAI initiatives, the greatest concern for BIPOC artists and museum staff remains simply that the argument continues to happen without them. 

Says Andrieux, “The overall structure and the way that this industry moves, operates, is funded, solicits its board members, does outreach to artists... It's all rooted in structural racism in a way that has to be undone, and I think the way to do that is by including voices of color.” 

Instead of debating deaccessioning in the name of diversity, Andrieux urges museum leaders to consider how they can honor BIPOC organizations and communities, like MoCADA. “Our work is literally grounded in deconstructing colonial systems through the cultural and artistic lens,” she says, “that is a completely different mandate.”

The art world can work toward equity via long-term foundational funding for BIPOC organizations, thereby fostering their sustainability. This would also help BIPOC artists and institutions “level the playing field with mainstream art organizations,” says Andrieux, instead of offering hollow DEAI arguments for deaccessions at major institutions. “That, to me, is diversity,” she says. “That, to me, is inclusion.”